MUNCIE, Ind. -- In the communications industry a repeater is a device that accepts an incoming signal and literally repeats it -- strengthening the message while passing it along to a wider audience.

In a new program, Ball State University’s Center for Information and Communication Sciences (CICS) acts as a repeater for Cisco Systems, the world leader in networking for the Internet.

CICS has been named a Cisco Networking Regional Academy. The academy, the result of a nearly $60,000 grant from Cisco, "repeats" networking knowledge to area high school corporations which in turn offer classes to their students in "Internetworking."

"That’s the field that makes the Internet run," said Ron Kovac, who with fellow CICS professor Robert Yadon received the grant. "We all know about the Internet, but there’s a lot going on beneath it all that makes the Internet possible."

Kovac said the limited number of people worldwide who can design and set up networking systems is a problem for the entire field.

"This is such a new field. The term Internet only came out in 1991," he said. "Here we are -- companies are being driven in the quest for the information superhighway but there’s no way for people to be trained in it.

"These are the things that corporate America is dying for," Kovac said. "There are three jobs for every two qualified people out there. Cisco Academy is aimed at producing these people, not only for jobs in the field but for future college careers."

High schools designated as local academies send two of theirindustrial technology or computer teachers to the regional academy to complete four one-week sessions of on-line training. The curriculum, a simplified version of what Cisco uses to train professionals, includes text and still and animated graphics.

Students learn the curriculum in four semesters, most likely during their junior and senior years. Afterwards they should be ready for either the job market or an undergraduate program and, ultimately, a master’s program like CICS.

The possibility of leading future students to CICS’s program is one example of how the partnership between high schools, CICS and Cisco is a win-win situation, Kovac and Yadon said.

While the high schools are able to offer specialized training to their students, they also gain two teachers in the district who can help the schools network themselves. Two teachers from Merrillville were the first to train at Ball State.

"Within a couple of hours of beginning the program, they were on the machine and learning the curriculum," said Martin Weddle, a CICS student who went through the program and helped train the Merrillville instructors. "They came out absolutely fired up."

While Cisco provides the grant and the curriculum, all the corporations with which CICS partners benefit as well.

"These companies desperately want to find trained individuals," Yadon said. "So just being able to work with us and have access to a pool of talent like our students is extremely valuable to them. It’s not just a donation and they walk away. We do call them partnerships because they get something back that they value."

Kovac said the local economy may be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the program.

"Why do places like Silicon Valley exist? Companies start there because there’s a pool of trained employees," Kovac said.

Companies may want to move to an inexpensive area with available land like Delaware County, but they won’t without a pool of talent from which to hire.

"Firms are starting to look toward this area as a good place to locate," Yadon said. "The more we can do to prepare our students in K-12 and postsecondary for jobs in the information age, the better off we’re going to be."

Kovac and Yadon have begun the selection process for local academies among area schools.

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information about this story or how to reach the source, contact Lori Rader at 765-285-1560 or lrader@bsu.edu.)